I've found maya's edge selection to be fucking horrible, always selecting random edges on the back side of the model? Maya7 was the last good version of maya for selection is this fixed in maya2010?
Don't think that thing will bake well anyway.... you edges are super tight on the HP. I recommend making the edges softer convert the LP to one smoothing group and bake.
The caps of the cylinders can be reduced; instead of having all edges meed at a point int he middle, delete those edges and manually cut in the triangles, cutting across the cap.
Not bad so far. The top edges could probably be more round and some edges be soften, but it's pretty good at the moment. The center button also doesn't look perfectly round.
One more thing. Terminating edge loops on NGON's is a good way to have edge flow be easier to control when shit gets crazy and you have a lot to control. Unsubdivided Subdivided
another (oldschool) trick that i find preferable to photoshop bevels is to use layer adjustments such as drop shadows and a teeny tiny bit of edge glow to make crevices darker and edges pop a little.
I think you have to make the material BLEND_Translucent, BLEND_Masked as far as I know takes the edge of a 1 bit alpha (like in a dxt) and anti aliases the edges so they aren't hard.
I figured it out, you have to have uv border edges so the uv's can expand where they are being preserved, lots of cutting of edges in the uv editor before the tool will work.